Ancient times

We woke early this morning, went to the airport and caught a flight from Point A to Point B as shown on the map I posted on September 25.  We rented a car (Hertz) in Izmir and headed south.  We are now in Selçuk. 

Diane finds the greatest of hotels and this one is to her usual standard:  $100 / night, location is perfect, it has rooftop restaurant (which I am writing from right now), free shuttles to Effesus, free breakfast, free tea, free wifi, free guidebooks.  I like “free.”  The proprietor sat with us for about 30 minutes when we first arrived, giving us his informed opinions about what to do and helped us decide on the order to do things.

Selçuk is the purported place where John the Apostle wrote a bunch of his book for the bible and did a lot of evangelizing, St Pete visited here, and it is said that Mary, mother of Jesus, died here.  And they are the newcomers.  Homer wrote a lot of stuff while here, and the ancient cities around here, which once were harbors, are now surrounded by farmland.

As someone who grew up in North America,  which is dominantly Christian, it can seem as though history begins at the birth of Jesus and the detailed historical record only starts sometime after 1492.  In this area of the world, the historical record begins long before any of this. 

Tomorrow we go to the famed Ephesus, but today we went for a car trip down to the ancient Greek town of Priene and the Roman town of Miletus.  Both are stunningly intact. 

Priene was not rebuilt by the Romans, and remains an ancient Greek town, because through the 300s BC, the river silted up the harbor so badly that the Romans had no interest in Priene.  We wandered through the town, temples, squares and houses.  I felt a bit like a time-reversed ghost, being able to walk through walls and across barriers in a way that its original residents never could have.  If all time exists at the same time, today my ghost image must have terrified the ancient residents of Priene.

Meletus  was about 30 minutes further down the road.  It has a spectacular Roman amphitheater which sat 25,000 people (I kid you not).  There were orchestral performances, drama and oratorios there.  I can imagine that people would gather there just to listen to someone read a book, since very few towns would own them at that time. 

I’ve always wondered about amphitheater acoustics.   Remarkably a bus tour of German tourists descended upon the Miletus amphitheater and about ten in the crowd walked onto the stage and began singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.  At the time, Diane and I were sitting in the sun at the absolute very top seats of the amphitheater and it was amazing how clearly we would hear the song.  Beautiful.  We could talk back to the choir without shouting.  Amazing.

We returned back to Selçuk shortly before dusk and immediately went to the rooftop for dinner.  No debate about where to eat this evening: full concord.  Diane and I shared a bottle of wine, and if this journal entry is duller than usual, that is the reason.  My mind is currently as sharp as a blunt axe.